Nike VRS Covert Forged Irons Use Woods Technology

Most forged irons are built to offer the soft, buttery feel that better players prefer. Not the new Nike VRS Covert Forged irons however. They have been built with "metal wood distance in mind".

Building on the success and design of the Nike VRS Forged irons, the Covert Forged set features a lower, deeper centre of gravity as well as faster ball speeds.

Many players found the distance of the original VRS Forged irons was very good. Tiger Woods has had a VRS Forged 2-iron in his bag since 2012. Nike's primary focus with the VRS Covert Forged irons was to improve the distance players get on off-centre hits.

So how did they go about this? Simple, they looked to their woods. No, not Tiger, they looked to the construction of their metal woods.

The last few generations of Nike metal woods have featured their NexCOR face. Built using a variable thickness, the NexCOR face increases the flex or trampoline effect, producing faster ball speeds right across the clubhead. For the first time, Nike have added this face technology to a forged iron.

The result? Nike say the VRS Covert Forged is up to 7 yards longer than the previous VRS Forged design.

During their research, Nike found another problem that needed solving: "Our research showed that more than 80 percent of player impact is between the centre and the toe side of an iron", Nike's Iron Innovation Engineer, Chris Savage.

To cater to this trend, Nike had to move the centre of gravity. Using the cavity-back design, they moved weight within the clubhead to shift the CG position to the centre of the clubface, enhanced the perimeter weighting and added more cavity behind the toe. The results are pretty impressive.

Savage told us "By moving the true sweet spot to the area where most people hit the ball, we enhanced the iron’s feel and improved off center performance by as much as 17 percent.”

The VRS Covert Forged iron also features Nike's latest X3X groove technology. The idea behind the new groove design and pattern is that by getting the grooves closer together and deeper in the face, Nike can increase spin and help maintain ball flight. Nike say the result is a 50% decrease in the dispersion of long iron shots hit from difficult lies.